You say you want a revolution

Cross-fertilisation of ideas from one sector to another offers new ideas and livens up tired campaigns. So, I hope a property developer will nick the notion of playing Revolution from TC Communications’ client, BLP Insurance. Even if you have no intention of taking out any insurance whatsoever, it’s worth logging onto the company’s website (www.blpinsurance.com) just to have a go at playing this computer game led from the front by a bare-breasted Marianne (curiously, with no nipples), the French symbol of liberty and reason. You’ll get to shoot any number of bad-guy soldiers and mysteriously, more bad guys in balloons overhead with a tilting cannon. Sadly, my cannon wasn’t tilting as well as it could, obviously, when my top score only managed to reach a miserable 1735, while the highest score so far was a cracking 42,165 by someone called John. But then if you work in insurance, I guess you have plenty of dull periods when murdering aristocrats has to be better than looking at premiums and paying out when people’s basements flood or the guttering crashes to the ground in a high wind.

A great gimmick, however, as the prize for the best cannon handler is a clay-shooting day for the winner and his mate, where they get to fire antique blunderbusses and flintlocks. Those clay pigeons don’t stand a chance now, do they? And I bet they’ll wish now they’d taken out some insurance.

Joanna Lennon from TC Communications, the company also behind the recent rebrand of estate agent Chancellors, says the idea came about when trying to establish BLP’s brand awareness and clarify the product. Trying to reach BLP’s main target market – directors of the building trades, housing associations and developers – the campaign with the strapline ‘We are the revolution’ made the point that there is an alternative to the traditional new home warranty. “The campaign has so far included ads in the building trades’, developers’ and property press titles; online display ads, e-shots, direct mail and PR,” explains Lennon. She adds that a micro website (blpred.co.uk), a link between the ads and the company’s main website, was also established as a call to action for interested parties to find out more. A good idea to nick then, because ‘we all want to change the world’ (with apologies to Lennon and McCartney).